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Friday, March 21, 2014

For Your Viewing Pleasure by Jenny Gardiner

Warning:
spoiler alert.

No,
there's no actual spoiling going on here. Rather this is about spoiler alerts.
And the downsides of how modern TV viewing, in which — unless you're hermetically
sealed à la Bubble Boy — it's nigh impossible to either avoid finding out what
happened or spill the beans to others, risking their wrath, ire and permanent
reminders for all eternity about what a horrid person you are because you can't
keep secrets about what happened to X, Y or Z on show A, B or C.

We
had to reluctantly watch a movie on VCR the other night. VCR? Surely you
remember that relic, a cutting edge electronic device that kicked Betamax's
butt in the dinosaur days of television accessories. But with all of the
viewing pleasure options out there, those many devices that make our HD it's
very HD-iest, it seemed nuts to have to regress from walking upright with spine
erect to dragging knuckles along the dry river bed. Yet videotape became our
only option if we wanted to watch something without being gouged out the wazoo,
so drag them we did.

We
have an extensive VCR tape collection, all deteriorating due to the inevitable
half-life of celluloid (or plastic, or whatever they're composed of). If the tapes
even work, they’re practically unviewable, thanks to glitches, snags and
blurred images (or is that my failing eyesight?). So incompatible with HD, in
which you can detect the presence of a zit that hasn't even begun to form on
the face of the most beautiful actress in the world, if you look closely
enough.

When
we decide to watch something on TV, invariably, despite several hundred
channels on cable, there's nothing on worth watching. Which means you go to the
go-to sites in search of more options. Nine times out of ten we already have
the thing on tape but who wants to compromise quality when there's much better high
definition, hifalutin' options out there? Then we start the rounds, to find
somewhere, anywhere, where we aren't gouged into paying for something we could
watch for free if only we could remember how to operate the VCR with the seven
plus remotes we juggle (and of course the volume never seems to be controllable
but for actually standing up and physically managing it — ditto the pause
button — a real nuisance for couch potatoes).

We
visit Netflix first, considering we're paying for a subscription to watch all
sorts of things for "free" (despite that subscription price), yet it
seems whatever we want to watch is never free. It could be a lousy B-movie from
the 70's, say, John Travolta's compellingly-acted The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, or maybe Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, and yet for some reason it still
costs money, even though we are likely the only viewers on the planet left
wanting to watch it.

Next
it's Amazon Prime, because hey, we belong, dammit. We're supposed to get
something for nothing! But never is it free there, either. Nowhere is that lame,
lone movie available for free. Even though that VHS tape for which we likely
paid thirty bucks twenty years ago is lying in wait in my dusty closet,
offering up its retired services for absolutely nothing! But no, we want quality (besides which, I feel like if
you ponied up that much for the original there ought to be some quid pro quo
for use of the improved version of such). It's on to Blu-ray, Roku, Apple TV, Hulu,
Hulu Plus (paying yet more), even Youtube, god forbid (but we've done it, when
all that's available is a bootleg version of something unavailable even for
purchase elsewhere).

The
film we wanted for free? Revenge of the
Pink Panther, from circa before fire was invented I think. I would bet that
not one other person in this universe had the need to watch that movie that
night, yet all sources were demanding blood ransom for it, for something that
ought to by now be considered part of the public domain. If my books are free
on Google without my permission, then why isn't Peter Sellers? In fact I would
think if there is even a star alive left from that film, he or she would be
grateful we were resurrecting it from the grave (for which, by the way, it is
imminently worth resurrecting). Does free TV exist anymore, except if you have
to sacrifice your eyesight — and viewing pleasure — by watching the old timey
low-fi versions, with quality so lacking you might want to watch with
magnifying glasses?

Now
there are other downsides to all these newfangled viewing options: take for example
binge-watching, and all those pay programs to which too many of us get addicted
but are watching on entirely different schedules. Used to be various nights of
the week were "must see TV" nights. Collectively we all watched to
see who shot that annoying JR. Together we bade farewell to Hawkeye and the
gang, and if we missed it, well, be sure you plan your summer vacation around
the re-run, which would air in mid-July when there was quite nothing worth
watching on TV and the airwaves were taken up with a lot of very boring golf
programming on weekends, and embarrassingly bad movies-of-the-week starring
Burt Reynolds or worse still Karen Black, on weeknights. Daytime was the domain
of lousy soap operas and game shows starring flamboyant-yet-washed-up-celebrities.

But
now, you watch it, you don't dare discuss it, for fear of being The Spoiler.
Everyone hates The Spoiler, the one who ruins it by disclosing the denouement,
rendering it purposeless for the rest of us to bother watching the show, even
if we do pay too damned much for that HBO subscription and want to maximize our
expenditure by watching every episode of everything on that network come hell
or high water.

In
my house, we have the compounded problem of kids coming home over break and
binge-watching a show we've not seen entirely, so it's blasting on the screen
in the living room by day, sending those who aren't caught up on season five to
another section of the house to avoid spoilage. Worse still it's a show I
wouldn't dream of watching — some kitschy drama or a gory zombie series — and
I'm stuck with it blaring in the background while I try to write. If you want
to be around your kids at all during their brief respites home, potentially
lousy TV programming comes with the territory. Oh and then you have each kid
watching it at a different time while you're there, so you have to avoid
repeated episodes. The flip side of them being away is that sometimes we've
seen the show, and they've not. If we dare let slip the outcomes, well, we'll
have to live with the consequences. Tougher still was our own binging of Breaking Bad, the crystal meth of TV
shows. With but a few remaining episodes to watch, the kids returned for a
lengthy holiday break, which meant no Breaking
Bad for over a week. I practically needed rehab to break my addiction.

I
am troubled that better television is becoming the venue of the haves, versus
the have-nots. If you can pay for it, you get to see the great award-winning
program series, otherwise you're stuck with reruns of What's Happenin' on TNT. That's if you can afford cable. If not,
you're totally at the mercy of network re-runs of Two and a Half Men, for which I collectively apologize.

It's
enough to send me to a movie theater. But then again, once you tally up the
cost of tickets and popcorn, maybe I should just head out to my favorite
restaurant and find my entertainment there instead — no doubt it'll be cheaper.